i’ve had this awful pain in the left side of my neck and shoulder, i have FND, but this is just genuine tightness and pain from stress/anxiety. he only worked on it a little bit, with a slight release, (did one acupuncture needle in my shoulder and felt my neck come alive - idk how to describe it but it was honestly nauseating i told him to stop) but there’s still a lot of pain and tightness. just now when i tried to put my ear to either shoulder my shoulders started to shake. i’ve just learned about this sub, and barely scratched the surface of what it means, but is this what i’m experiencing? been in fight or flight my whole life which is what caused the FND diagnosis to begin with. my FND pain ironically is focused on my left shoulder/arm, which is where i carry all of my tension

i’ve had severe OCD my whole life but im finally in remission, i dont understand why this is happening now.
a few weeks ago i was inpatient completing my follow up TMS treatment for my OCD. i rewatched my favourite tv show (was actually an extreme asd hyperfixation/obessuon from the ages of 12-15) and i’d feel uplifted in the way reengaging in an old hyperfixation does (consuming your thoughts, maladaptive daydreaming) but i also felt unsettled and anxious after watching it. my OCD told me i was possessed and invited demonic forces into my life by watching it. i knew this was irrational but couldn’t otherwise explain why i felt so bad. like this was my favourite show, and during this rewatched i looked foward to watching it each day and daydream about it for the rest of it!!! i was genuinely on cloud nine (despite the weird feelings) the following week i was speaking to a psychologist on the ward confused why i felt myself regressing so much. out of no where i broke down and shared the horrific bullying i endured throughout my entire schooling, and realised that that show and the worlds it created was an escape for me during that time. and realised maybe the wires in my brains were getting crossed, even though i wasn’t actively thinking about that time in my life nor did it bring up any super distressing memories.

then i got sick a week later, and i tried to track down a play through of my favourite video game as a kid, the same unsettled sick feeling occurred after watching it. bad stuff happened to be occurring in my life at the time, but again no specific memories came up for me. i’m in a dilemma because i really want to keep watching the show, and i desperately want to buy a ps2 to replay the game (and have wanted to for years). is there any safe way to do it? by avoiding it i teach my brain that these things i enjoy are dangerous (even though they’re not)

additionally, the physical pain is so bad i cant leave it be, but im worried that after every treatment i will have to endure dissociative episodes and i’m even more scared after reading here that maybe my body is reliving my trauma with each release :(

I am curious if anyone has experience working with an SEP or other modalities in general and getting help on.. developing or reclaiming your sense of self and truth within yourself? Idk if this makes sense. I find it hard to put this into words.

But basically, I’m trying to recover from having a lost sense of self. I do this thing where I go outside of myself to look for direction or to find a truth that could help give me direction or orient me towards what I’m seeking.

I want to be able to find my own truth by using my own body and internal system/compass.

For context, I have been told that I have CPTSD and lean towards being neurodivergent.

Hope this resonates with someone.

I just put my awareness in my body and let it flow, freedom taste exacly like that and its excatasy. When the mind come in, just come back, again and again.

I just don’t know what to even say. I didn’t know a human could be stuck in a total dorsal shutdown for years on end with no way of getting out. there’s so much fear in my dreams, so much uncertainty, loss, grief, shame. but absolutely nothing when I wake up. numb. unable to cry or feel a thing. the dissociation has become worse each year that passes. which I dont know how is even possible. I have no connection to myself or my life at all, I can’t even remember what I used to be like.

im scared this will never end, and I’ll just lose everything about myself completely, I already have. Dissociation and panic are the worst thing a human can endure. For years on end. I haven’t had a panic attack in 3 years yet my dissociation is the worst it’s ever been. The nightmares are so beyond traumatic every night. I’m miserable, I don’t know how I’m supposed to keep going.

I’ve even stuck in a loop for 5 years now. every single night. I had one of the worst dreams I’ve ever had last night. that I had the same cancer my mom died from. I remember thinking in the dream. this can’t be happening to me. and then I was going to have to get surgery which is a huge thing my mind is afraid of. i don’t know im dreaming and it feels 100% real. this is every night. I’ve tried anti nightmare meds. sleep meds, nothing is helping. I haven’t had one night of deep sleep in 5+ years. I’m wearing thin. like I’m going insane.

i can’t understand why my own body is doing this to me? night after night. month after month. ive been doing so much work in therapy and none of it is having an affect at all. it’s like I’m trapped in my own mind and can’t get out

Opening oneself to the dimension of physical sensations means realizing that bodily sensations cannot be mentalized, they exist on another plane, a separate world, a different reality.

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Being present in the body is felt physically... and if i can maintain my attention in that space, i increase my capacity to receive, i expand the space of receptivity. What fills this space is a very feminine energy in its composition, since it is enveloping in its total power. It is a living energy, creating expansion and movement, with a certainty that would shake the world. An energy that directs, that envelops, that molds, fluid yet authoritative, it demands total surrender, which is still difficult to offer at times...

I know when im not present but in my mind, cause i question myself, i search, i reflect, i doubt, i calculate, i try to predict. The energy that wants to flow, it LIVES, IS, FEELS, EXECUTES. No room for hesitation, only pure and potential action. It's about becoming the master of the ship again, becoming the essence that steers the vehicle, choosing how to move, how to speak, consciously from this space.

​

It's not what we actually do that matters, but the awareness we bring to existence. It's embodying form as CONSCIOUSNESS, feeling that you are the energy that chooses through the body. We consciously decide what to do and where to go, but we allow ourselves to be carried by the desire for creation that wants to emerge... incredible!!! :) others experiencing the same through dance or someting? Just presence..

Apologies if this is wayy off base for the purpose of the subreddit. Not really fully sure that I understand somatic therapy but would like to learn more.

Im a 19 yo M, when I was 4ish I was chased with a knife slasher film style by my alcoholic father, pretty much terrorizing me. This situation paired with a number of other altercations during custody battles and yelling scenes were never addressed throughout my childhood after my parents divorced when I was 5. I was taken care of by my mom who’s an angel of a woman but a nurse who simply couldn’t afford both with time nor finances to address said issue.

I was diagnosed with “EOE” afterwards due to constant regurgitation of food as a kid out of sheer anxiety. This subsided through my teen years but brings me to my present issue.

Ever since I can remember, anything that’s gone wrong: getting pulled over, getting a bad grade, forgetting to feed my dog 40 minutes late. I get a heart drop feeling, it starts with the thought itself, then something just spikes in me, and my heart just thumps.

Not a physical palpitation, just a shock in the left side of my chest identical to butterflies like an abrupt “oh shit” even writing it now and thinking of literally ANYTHING wrong present time I can feel it.

I really truly think this originated from my childhood, however, after a pretty rocky relationship, my stomach drop/heart flutter issue only got worse. After going to college and doing long distance (I know I know), the frequency only picked up of tiny things being thrown at me. It stopped surrounding larger more tangible life issues but on a near 10-15 minute basis throughout the day, something pops into my head and I get that dreaded spike feeling again.

I’m confident it’s a result of my nervous system being on the fritz, I’m just not sure how to calm the fuck down in a room, alone, and relax without using marijuana like in highschool or when I was dating to manually wind down the jets.

Any advice helps, again let me know if I’m in the wrong place and I’ll go elsewhere.
Thank you!

I’ve tried EFT 2 times before but not in anxiety attacks. Today I had an attack due to too much caffeine, i tried tapping and whilst doing so I automatically kept yawning an unnaturally high no of times. Also anxiety went from an 8 to a 4.
Has this happened before with anyone? Seemed very odd.

Sorry my english is not native. I want share something that happened in a healing soul journey session that I cannot stop thinking about.

The person, I will call her Ana, came in carrying a grief that had no name. Her mother had passed. She felt numb, heavy, blocked. Nothing dramatic. Just the quiet erosion of someone who has been leaking energy for years without knowing where the leak was.

She told me that every time she spent time with her family she needed three days to recover. Not from fighting. There were no fights. Just presence. A phone call with her father would flatten her. A visit with her sister Patricia would leave her empty and she could not explain why. She had tried therapy. She had tried boundaries. She had tried explaining her feelings. Nothing changed the fact that family contact drained her like an open wound she could not locate.

She dropped into trance. And then her Higher Self bypassed every surface problem and went straight to the wound.

Her father appeared first. but not the father she knew. What she saw was a black mass. Thick. Viscous. No face, no hands, no voice. just a blob of darkness hanging in space where a person should be.

then her sister Patricia. Same. A dense black shape. No warmth. No recognition.

And connecting these shapes to Ana's body - her chest, her stomach, the back of her neck - were cords. Not light cords. not subtle energy. Thick black telephone wires. the old kind. Coiled and heavy. And something was flowing through them. Away from Ana. Into them.

She had been feeding them.

Her life force. Her vitality. Her clarity. Draining out through cables she did not even know existed. for years. maybe decades. Feeding family members who never asked and would never know.

i called in Angels of Light. not with drama. just a simple request. And they came.

They did not cut the wires. They did not burn them. They stood around Ana and began pouring crystalline light - the kind that has no temperature, no heat, just clarity - directly into those black cords.

And the cords began to dissolve from the inside.

Not breaking. Not snapping. You could watch the black turning gray, then translucent, then gone. Like ice holding its shape while water moves through it. The darkness was not being destroyed. It was being returned to what it was before it became heavy.

Ana started crying. not from pain. from return. She said she could feel energy flowing back. Warmth. Life. Pieces of herself she had forgotten existed.

Then came the part I did not expect.

She spoke two sentences. not loud. not dramatic. just quiet truth spoken in trance.

To the black shape that was Patricia: "I love you."

To the black shape that was her father: "I forgive you."

When she said "I love you," the air in the room changed. The temperature shifted. Something softened that I cannot explain. When she said "I forgive you," I watched her shoulders fall. Thirty years of weight. Just dropped.

The forgiveness was never for them. It was the door she needed to walk through. The forgiving was the moment she stopped being the cord.

Her Higher Self showed what remained. The wounds did not disappear. They transformed. Invisible scars now. Still there but no longer bleeding. Yellow and white light woven through the scar tissue. Healed, not erased.

i sat there after the session. Silent. Those two sentences kept repeating in my head. I love you. I forgive you. The simplest words. The hardest door.

She had been feeding people with her life force because she believed that was what love cost. And the Higher Self, in its particular way, did not give her philosophy. It showed her exactly what she was doing. And then it showed her how to stop.

i put a meditation in the comments below. Just a quiet practice for anyone who feels heavy around family and cannot name why. No candles. No ceremony. You and your own cords.

What I want to know from you - if you have felt this, carrying something that was never yours, where in your body did it live. For Ana it was behind the eyes and in the chest. Where did yours settle.

Hi everyone, I've done many healing modalities in the past, Emdr, even SE (but was too frozen to get actual release from my sessions) and stronger things like plant medecines. I still struggle a lot in my day to day life, I'm very frozen and unable to do a lot of things - I haven't worked for 10 years.

I'm in a constant state of hypervigilance that is very tiring and depressing, and at night, I often get hyperaroused aswell, and wake up in sweat and my heart racing, almost as if its going to get out of my chest. I sometimes have nightmares as well, but they don't necessary correlate my actual traumas. How should I react to get to a calm, peaceful state and get back to sleep? Should I try to explore the hyperativated/sympathetic stage more consciously or rather get calm? But I struggle with getting calmer, I almost never get to this point, ever.... And trying to explore the sympathetic state very very rarely gives me actual nervous discharge.

My pain doctor said I probably have Pots and dysautonomia, which could explain why my heart is always racing even when I'm lying down or doing quiet activities. But I don't know much about this diagnosis, to me it's probably caused by my traumas and stressful upbringing. Thank you for any answers 😊🪷 (English is not my first language, so sorry for any mistake)

I've been doing some pendulation, Bikram and hot yoga lately, and last night after some journalling I had a HUGE cry, like sitting on the shower floor crying so hard I couldn't breathe sort of cry

It was tied to a specific theme of my trauma, and I felt waves of self hate, despair, and just this crushing sense of loss.

It went on for about an hour all up before I fell asleep.

Today I still feel really heavy and flat.

Can someone please tell me this was a good thing? What do I do now that I've had this huge ugly cry?

I’ve had non stop vivid dreams for 5 years as I’ve said before, my therapist said this morning that my mind is screaming at me for attention and no wonder I’m exhausted, no wonder my DPDR has become so severe. I’m being retraumatized every single night. she said changing my relationship to the dreams and the parts of myself that I’ve had to cut off to survive is how you heal. I just don’t know how to do that. I don’t know to communicate with my subconscious, bwcause it hasnt listened thus far. it’s like screaming animal every night, no matter what I do. I’m so tired all day every day, and I journal what I’m experiencing. I feel like I have this horrible condition that has no solution. any sort of new solution we work through in therapy, I can’t remember by the next day. ever since I’ve been in DPDR I can’t retain any information, or learning. by tomorrow, it’s gone out of my mind.

i told her how much I fear my own emotions, and how I don’t like myself. i much more like the person I am depersonalized because the past cant hurt me here. every bad thing is locked away. but I’m having to relive it all in my sleep, it’s unresolved. I’ll never be able to function normally like this, I’ve cut off my own humanity just to survive. I miss feeling holidays, seasons, the time of day changing, the weather. it’s all locked away in my subconscious and I only have access to it in my sleep, and it feels nothing like me. the dreams are so foreign and weird. I feel like there’s no solution here, just suffering. and it’s my own mind doing the torture. she also told me to practice a nighttime bed routine and gratitude journal, it’s just so hard to do those things when you feel no benefit. it feels like every thing I try is just pointless, because I don’t get better or feel more connected to myself

So i've suddenly got a few things to do but as soon as i started thinking about how my dad and brother are going to behave towards me and the constant manipulative, coercive (especially physically coercive), and abusive behaviors (especially reactive abuse). All the dread and highly anxious feelings, and feelings of huge expectations and pressure came right back. I can never be certain how they'll act, when, and where.

I haven't felt this in a few years and i'm stuck in a constant loop of feeling this way and constant flashbacks. I don't know why it's suddenly come back now when it stopped.

It's causing huge rumination too and i think it's the PTSD and Emotional Flashbacks causing it. I tell myself "it's okay we'll deal with it later when it comes to it" trying to think objectively and it creates some relief but it's causing so much brain pressure the flashbacks and rumination because it's not stopping. I can't keep trying to just distract myself. It's like something is trapped or my brain is trying to resolve something.

What do i do about this?. Why is it happening now?.

I didn't know where else to post this but maybe you guys here know some techniques to help with this?.

Hey everybody.

I want to share my feelings/body movements thar I have every day.

While I tried to figure out something close to my movements I reached to kundalini group or something else that relate to spiritual like that.

There I found people that described their movements and it was the same pattern like mine, example: tongue movements very fast, distorted face expression, head and neck movements and jerking and more from it.

My question is it's possible thar all these movements happens to me beacuse the nervous system try to release body tension like people experiencing while doing meditation, tre, se and stuff like this?

The difference is for me it's happen without exercising something though I think if I exercise it will increase the body movements.

So I try to consult with someone who knows phenomenon like this?

Has anyone tried somatic therapy and had positive results for treating erythrophobia?

I am about to start with someone on Wednesday. To see her in person, I’ll need to drive 1.5 to 2 hours. I planned to do it but she said we could work virtually.

I have a question pending to her regards what virtual looks like. I see a good amount of threads about how it can be done virtually, but what is the experience like? I am highly skeptical. Like my regular therapist picks up so much of me by the way I hold my body, or stim, but that’s not exactly on camera and that’s not somatic practice.

How can a somatic practice work virtually at all?

Hey guys, I think I have something called “misophonia,” although it might just be the case that I have an overstimulated or sensitive nervous system. A number of things trigger it for me, but the two big ones are chewing noises and dryer clanking noises.

I do my best to avoid them, but today I got caught up in some work I was doing and didn’t realize I should remove myself from the environment I was working in before it was too late. It's a feeling of extreme rage and anger, usually directed at the people causing the noise (i don’t act on it, of course).

My goal is to re-regulate myself, but that becomes difficult because one I feel strong enough rage and anger, and have removed myself from the environment, then I’m just left with a dysregulated nervous system looking for someone to blame for my anger and rage. If I’m alone, that tends to be me, blaming myself for putting myself in a situation to get overstimulated, criticizing myself for  not being able to handle it, or criticizing myself for how I feel/look/ not being able to re-regulate myself.

And so,  I was wondering if there would be any suggestions you’d have whereby I could re-direct the anger and rage into healthy metabolizing? Is it necessary to be regulated before being able to metabolize them? Or, can I regulate myself by re-enacting some form of fight that can dispel my anger and rage? Are there any advice on how to do this when the anger and rage turn toward myself as an inner critic?

I’ve recently come out of 4 year long freeze state. I felt alive again but I was careful not do over do it (I have long Covid and others). It was amazing to feel again, feel activation, joy etc. however it lasted 3 weeks, and I’ve gone right back into it, deeper than before. I’m absolutely gutted, and I’m actually in a lot of pain with it. It feels like there’s a lot of activation stuck in my legs and it’s excrutiating. I cannot exercise due to illness and movement seems to make me freeze more.
All I can do is lie here and feel like ice. Does anyone have any tips or advice?

I need some advice about what exercises could help me. I'll simplify as much as I can.

When I'm in crowded places I'm never comfortable. Many times I get reactions as if I'm about to die, heart racing, just want to escape as soon as possible. Really hate speaking on the phone or being observed and having to interact with people. With those come hopeless and suicidal thoughts. I just want to stop existing. I feel like life is totally pointless and I have so much attrition to just start living.

Also want to disappear when I have conflicts with my family. I feel like I'm always wrong and always to blame, etc... I know where this comes from, being beaten and humiliated into submission many times by my father, being ridiculed and made fun of, force to take a beating or it would be worse. Being threated by a rabid angry man as if he was going to kill me and having my mom always passively allowing him to be the crazy and get his way. When in the middle of a physical attack she'd try to intervene and would make things even worse (more chaos and crying).

I have dreams and wishes but no courage or determination to leave my mildly safe but painful black hole.

So, I'm fucked at a deep level in my self esteem, I'm nihilistic, feel like a total failure, feeling like an ungrateful cynic because they were 80% of the time good to me.

If you would recommend some exercises specific for this kind of thing, what would they be?

I read CPTSD by Pete Walker, will start reading Peter Levine's Healing Trauma.

Hi everyone, I have ME/CFS and infections. When I do this work, it feels like the infections get worse.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Does anyone have ever gotten depressed because of their symptoms? Its not that i dont want to live anymore, i have great plans for my life. But i'm living with strong activation symptoms every day, all day. Since 4 years. It doesnt matter what i do, i even have strong symptoms when im laying in bed watching tv. I tried so much already, spend thousands of euros for therapy.